A Life in Frocks

A Life in Frocks is about the ‘divine obsession’ — a woman’s love for clothes. In particular, it is a personal, entertaining, joyous — and seductive — exploration of the significance of clothes, filtered through one woman’s life-long sartorial infatuation.

For as long as she can remember, Kelly Doust has been passionate about clothes. They are her first, and most enduring, love affair to date. Like the vast majority of women, she adores the playfulness of fashion and its endless ability to transform. She loves the ritual and drama of getting dressed, assuming different identities in different outfits and exploring the many facets of her personality. She buys far too many glossy magazines, and puzzles over how she can spend half her life shopping and yet still find herself with nothing to wear. Over the years, clothes have comforted her, given her confidence, lured lovers, made her invisible, secured jobs, aged her and given back her youth. And yes, they have betrayed her.

A beautifully illustrated mix of memoir, philosophies and fantasies, A Life in Frocks is a book for those who love clothes and find fashion beguiling, fickle and fabulous.

About The Author

Kelly Doust has been scouring flea markets and charity stores for vintage fashion, fabrics and homewares from her early teens, and making and reinventing things in her own trial-and-error way since she was a girl. Her favourite things, in no particular order, are tea, clothes, friends, home, crafternoons, and her husband and daughter. Before writing The Crafty Minx, The Crafty Kid and Life in Frocks, Kelly worked in book publishing and public relations in Sydney, Hong Kong and London, and as a freelance writer. She is a regular contributor to Australian Women’s Weekly and Vogue.